Yes, there is something of Br'er Rabbit in giant incumbent telcos' complaining about regulations. "Please mister please don't use the complicated franchise agreement my lawyer sent you that is actually written to conform exactly to my M&Ps!"
WTF? Now I have read it (well frankly I skimmed the last 25 of the 40 pages in this particular assignment), and it was clearly written by the Comcast lawyer. This isn't surprising: it's a contract between two parties, one of which executes scores of such contracts every year, and the other of which does so about once a decade. Who else would have written it? Saul Goodman?
As 'pdonis said, the "unattractive" terms are there precisely so that "only the big de-facto monopolies are willing to take the deal".